If that title didn’t clue you in, we’d had an exciting spring, in the less-than-desirable sort of way. On the bright side, I don’t know that I’ve ever sanitized, re-sanitized, and re-re-santized my house so many consecutive weeks in a row. It should be near glistening now with all of the freshly laundered sheets and towels wafting their glorious scent through the air.
Admitting to all this pestilence feels a little taboo. To be honest, I’m a little embarrassed to even be writing this post. (Maybe I’ll get lucky and won’t know any of y’all reading.)
Head lice and pinworms run rampant through elementary schools, particularly with preschool aged children. (I’d like to thank my four-year-old for introducing both into our household these past few months.) An estimated six to twelve million children will get head lice this year, with a 1-5% of the school having an active case of head lice at any given time. At my children’s small school, that’s 5-15 students who have head lice today! Pinworms are even more prevalent with 5-15% of the US population having them at any given point in time. That’s somewhere between three million and 50 million people that have them! These numbers are often greater in places that have temperate climates, like Tennessee.
I share this data because when you find yourself in that situation where Sister is scratching at her freshly washed hair and you peek through to find a creepy-crawly, it’s easy to feel horrified. It’s easy to feel that you must have done something wrong to allow this nasty infestation to occur. Maybe if you’d washed her hair a bit more. Or kept it in a ponytail. Or washed her sheets. It seems like there should have been something you could do to prevent this. That horror only increases with pinworms.
So what do you do? First, throw out that mom guilt.
This is not your fault. Could your child have washed their hands more? Probably. But I can confidently say that about every child I’ve ever known. Head lice and pinworms are highly contagious. So much so, that oftentimes you have to treat the whole family to get rid of a case. As young children have non-existent personal boundaries, they spread rapidly. Pinworm eggs can live on surfaces for two to three weeks! It’s as easy to get them as biting your nails after touching an infected surface. So do yourself a favor and nip those guilty thoughts in the bud. It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have prevented this. This is not a reflection on how clean your house is. Unfortunately, it’s even normal.
Take heart. They’re actually pretty easy to treat.
There are a myriad of over the counter options for both. With head lice, in particular, I was actually overwhelmed by the amount of products on Walmart shelves. I stood on that aisle, reading bottle after bottle, trying to decide what would be most effective. I finally put it to a vote using ChatGPT and made my decision. Our treatment for pinworms came right from Amazon in beautifully concealed packaging complete with a chalky banana flavor.
Don’t just treat the bugs you see. Treat the ones that may be hiding.
This may be where I go a little crazy. Eggs for both head lice and pinworms can survive on surfaces for two to three weeks. In order to fully eradicate an infestation, it’s important that you treat all surfaces where they may be hiding. This includes washing sheets, towels, and blankets; disinfecting stuffed animals; and in the case of pinworms, cleaning toilets and other bathroom surfaces. I’ve also been much more particular about having my children wash their hands before eating meals and reminding them to keep their fingers and objects out of their mouths.
Remember to do the follow-up treatment.
With each, you should administer a first treatment and then a follow-up treatment a bit later (a week later for head lice and two weeks for pinworms). This follow-up treatment is important to ensure that you’ve rid yourself of any lingering bugs. With my sweet girl, we spent an hour washing and then meticulously combing through her hair. She has fine hair, so I even picked out lice eggs that the comb wouldn’t remove. Yet, we still found living bugs on her the next week. It took three treatments, and multiple different shampoos, for lice to be fully eliminated. Pinworm medication will paralyze those living in you, but it does not kill the eggs. This follow up is important to eradicate any eggs that may have hatched since the treatment before they are mature enough to continue the life cycle themselves.
